2020-02-28 - Surprise In The Surprise

What's better than a surprise showing up at The Surprise? It is literally the best set up ever, so when Magnolia Jones shows up with very little notice at The Surprise, it is bound to be, uh, a surprise? Whatever Magnolia's goals with punning the hell out of the houseboat's name, they probably are pretty lame. Regardless, she shows up in those classic sneakers overwrought with Lark's drawings -- to be fair, Kevin got her a new pair for Christmas, this time in white canvas to give Lark plenty of art space. So far, llamas are featured wearing superhero capes and tiny -- are those hobbits? She paired her sneakers with jeans and an oversized sweater to help stave off the cold. Having long ago mastered the Mom Bun, she's accented the look with a rolled bandana.

She has a thick canvas bag in tow, and when she arrives at the houseboat, she calls, "Izzy! It's Mags. I brought pie!"

The houseboat has been relatively quiet, but that doesn't mean that Isabella hasn't been busy. The last few days have been spent recuperating from the latest attempt at her life, not-insignificant heartbreak, and whatever she can do to keep her head straight to prepare for her doctorate defense. Atop her refrigerator, secured by a magnet, is her flight itinerary and boarding pass - she leaves in about two days.

Her bedroom is in disarray, largely because she's in the midst of packing and set aside on the edge is a small box where she's placed a few items - an origami tyrannosaurus rex and a folded letter, with her name scrawled upon it in an elegant, feminine hand. A few would recognize Lilith Winslow's handwriting. A small box containing the compass earrings that Anne Washburn had gotten her for Christmas, and Byron's own gift of an actual compass rests within it as well. Nothing from Alexander, though reminders of him are permanent enough; the dandelion charm bracelet feels heavy on her left wrist.

The archaeologist is busy slipping an entire packet of documents carefully in a sturdy folder, before situating it in the outer pocket of a waterproofed laptop bag before a voice emanates from the threshold of her vessel. When the door opens to let Magnolia Jones in, surprise is evident in her expression. "Mags, I..." She pauses; her mind catches up quickly. "....my voicemail. Hi, how are you? Come in, you..." A glance at the box, and a genuine, but wan smile. "...you didn't have to bring me anything. Want some coffee? Booze?" She has plenty of either.

A wistful glance is cast towards the rest of the docks, before the door closes behind the private investigator. "Have a seat, sorry it's a bit of a mess. You caught me in the middle of arrangements." She's dressed simply, a sweater and jeans, but while her eyes are keen and alert, they are bloodshot and tired. They end up falling to the ground...and that's when she notices the sneakers.

There's a laugh, husky due to the hoarseness of her strained contralto. "Lark? How old is she now? And still about a thousand times a better artist than I ever will be."

Magnolia offers up a quick, but no less bright smile. There's even dimples. "Hi, yes... voicemail. Gotta say, I haven't gotten drunk dialed in a long time, but it was a lot more fun in college." She waits a heartbeat before stepping inside at the invitation. She starts to un-shoulder the bag with its two stacked pie boxes, and she holds up a hand at Isabella's initial response. "Nuuhh," the warning noise is accompanied by her own smile. "No one turns down pie. Unless you don't like pie, and just in case, I grabbed a package of Oreos, too."

Her eyes cut over the mess with a casual glance. Her scoff is light, and accompanied by a dismissive gesture. "Girl, this isn't a mess... you want to see a mess, come by my place after a slumber party with a bunch of six-year-olds. Now that is a mess -- oh, and I'll take coffee plus a little somethin'-somethin'. Rum, if you got it." She does kind of step over some debris on the floor to set down her bag and take a seat. "Arrangements, huh? Where you going?"

But then Izzy is asking about Lark, and she brightens to near incandescence. "Six going on thirty-seven." She waggles the sneakers slightly. "I have decided to accept that my kid is going to draw on anything that has a porus surface. We even repainted her walls to white so she can go to town." There's that we that has some weight to it, and she goes on to explain with her next sentence. "I think Kevin's dad is still getting used to her drawing on the walls."

Then, with some pause, she goes on, "You sounded like shit, Izzy. Is everything okay?"

"I'll eat the pie. I feel like I've been on a strictly alcohol-and-occasional-curry diet the last couple of weeks," Isabella says, at the very least able to return the smile Magnolia sends her way with one of her own, and proceeds to wave her into one of the tall stools at the counter to set down her burdens. She hands her a couple of small plates and forks. "Grab us a couple of slices and I'll start on the brew?"

The act is quick enough. She may be worthless in the kitchen, but she can operate a French press, and there's a quiet, absent, gentle brush of her fingers on the top of it, eyes taking up a memory before she reanimates again. The pause is brief, at least, and she ends up spiking two mugs full of good coffee flavored with roasted hazelnuts with bourbon - the ceramic receptacles carry the burden of the humor she lacks today, one reads Good Morning, I See the Assassins Have Failed, and the other reads, Of Course I Talk to Myself: Sometimes I Need Expert Advice. The latter is one that she hands to Magnolia and she settles against the counter near her.

"That's great." Despite her state, the words are genuinely meant. "Looks like she's either got her heart set on being a zoologist, or comic book artist, or someone who specializes in superhero animals, in which case I hope you're ready for a bunch of lab experiments." Her grin flashes bright, a degree of her usual luminous self visible for a second or two before it fades again. "And I'm..." She isn't alright, and she doesn't have the energy to lie. She scrubs the side of her face with a hand.

"...busy. I'm off to England in a couple of days, to defend my thesis and try and convince the eggheads in Oxford that some young, impetuous yank deserves to be part of their esteemed club of explorers," she continues, dryly. "Had to fend off a couple of homicidal attempts, and most recently fell through a grave that ought to be there, but isn't, plus all the strange dreams. I'm tired, getting away for a bit to remind myself that the world is overall a fascinating place, and people lead interesting lives, would do me some good, I think." There's a glance into her cup. "I'll be back in a week, so don't miss me just yet." She manages to give Magnolia a wink.

"Could be worse -- you could be thriving on Cheerios and carrot sticks." Now she is hauling out the two pie choices -- a classic cherry and a lovely chocolate cream because chocolate should come standard. She plops small slices of each onto the plates so they can sample both, and while she goes about that, she talks to Izzy. "I can't even think about Lark as an adult with a job... maybe she will just adventure around the world, befriending monsters."

Now she has a mug with coffee and rum, and she rather enjoys the sentiment printed on its exterior. Why, yes, Magnolia often does talk to herself -- usually in the mirror and with frank motivational speeches. She takes a sip of the mixed coffee while arching her brows up over those too-blue eyes at Isabella's attempt to, well, avoid the honesty that kids are great at and adults suck at. "Indiana Jones never needed approval, and he's legit." In fiction. "But that sounds terrible, stressful, and a threat to your liver." Another sip. "But pretty sure that isn't why you called me, Iz. I mean, I appreciate being someone you call when your shit faced and warning me against opening doors at graveyards -- which, by the way, I think Gray Harbor needs to close all the graveyards and invest in a deeply dedicated campaign that we cremate all our dead. A little salt, a little fire... can you burn ashes?"

She picks up a fork, looking up at her friend now. "I just worry about people leaving Gray Harbor, because most of them decide not to come back." Her smile has just the smallest edge of fragility. "You want me to look into the graveyard?"

"Have her see me when she gets old enough," Isabella quips, smiling in faint gratitude when Magnolia doles out some pie. She's not overly fond of sweets, but considering the last few days of alternating between the bottle and the toilet, sustenance of any sort is a must. She picks up a fork and gingerly nibbles at the dark chocolate and tart cherry combination; she's lost weight since Valentine's Day, to the point that she's starting to feel the spaces between her ribs.

She grins faintly at Magnolia. "What anyone won't tell you, especially archaeologists because he recruited plenty in the field when he was first dreamed up, is that Doctor Henry Jones Junior was an atrocious archaeologist who destroyed as many things as he found. But I love him anyway, nobody's perfect." She props her hand on her chin, examining the blonde in front of her. "And you might have something there, just cremating our dead and not burying them - considering the fact that nothing stays dead here, might be the only way we could to ensure that they at least won't menace our marathons for charity. Did you hear about the zombie run last year?"

Her hand settles down the fork and takes a sip of her coffee. "I called you because I wanted to warn every mover I know not to do that there," she says quietly to Magnolia. "I want Lark to live the rest of her life with a mother." It isn't an uncomplicated mystery as to why the archaeologist would feel that way - her mother was one of Billy the Ghoul's victims over the summer. "When you open a door on or maybe around the grave, you go to a place....I don't..." She scrubs her face with one hand. "We opened a Door into a Dream, Mags. Have you ever heard of one of us..." And she doesn't mean just people like them in general, but movers, those who can open doors, like herself and Magnolia. "Doing that before?"

"Of course he was an atrocious archeologist, just like Dick Tracy was an atrocious P.I. -- I went through all that certification and never got a wrist phone." It's a castaway statement, but with it is a small smile. "But yeah, I know what you mean -- defending your art is something we all go through. Kevin hits that wall all the time, because, well... bureaucrats."

Now she settles into silence as she listens to Izzy really lay it out, and her mouth tightens into a hard line. She shifts almost uneasily in her chair as she thinks back to the cassette tape, her father's voice, and she sucks in a tight breath through her teeth. "Yeah." She looks down, rubbing at the exterior of her mug. "Dad did, back when we thought he had died." She looks up at her friend now. "I guess that he opened a doorway in panic, trying to get him and Charlie's mom out of there. Guess that's why we didn't find a body -- he opened a Door, and never came back." And by her tone none of that changes anything.

She flexes her fingers around the mug. "He's somehow pulling us into Dreams, or finding ways to talk to people... I don't know how he's doing it, but it must be because he's a Mover. Was a Mover." She hesitates. "Is a Mover." She can't seem to decide which is the right conjugation, and so she moves past it. "Did you open the Door?"

"It must be rough being a reporter, too, especially one who has all the senses required to know what the truth is," Isabella tells Magnolia, sympathy in her eyes. "How's Kevin doing, anyway? I heard one of his editors died in a freak shooting accident at a gun store." Where all the guns in the store went off. While the look on her face suggests that she doesn't believe it was just a freak accident, there's the quiet and resigned air of a woman who is fully aware that that's how this town rolls and at the moment, she doesn't have the energy or inclination to go chasing after every dangerous thing. Not when she, herself, is hurting.

"Byron told me a little bit about it," she tells her quietly. "About your Dad and Detective Morgan's mom and...whatever had been chasing them. Let me know if you need help? When I get back? Whatever you need, really. I know what it's like." She does. "But I didn't know that's what happened, didn't even know that movers could do that - opening Doors into Dreams. Until lately, anyway. I didn't open it, but a friend of mine did. Anne Washburn, she's the archivist for city hall."

She purses her lips at what Magnolia imparts on her. "Sid was enough of a mover to pull me into Dreams all the time, when we were young. I think...maybe I knew how to do it before, also, but after my decade out, I don't remember much about...my abilities, though the longer I stay here, the more I remember." She takes another swallow of her coffee. "Opening the Door on Billy's grave took us to a shrine, Mags. Obsidian walls, or granite, like what you would see in the Vietnam memorial, extending upwards....they didn't have an end. They all just extended to infinity, to endlessness, filled with the names of the Lost. More people than this town could ever hold, and some of the names we recognized. And when we stayed long enough, the harder we fought what was happening, we started disappearing too, and our names appeared on the wall. It was a Dream, I'm sure we need to take everything that happened in there with a grain of salt, but...I don't know. We just started fading. Becoming ordinary, unremarkable...colorless. That's why I didn't...that's why I called everyone I knew who could open a Door. I thought that was it for us."

"Yeah..." Magnolia breathes out a short sigh. "Um. He's doing okay. You know Kevin -- the whole thing about all the guns going off at once has him pretty riled up that it was some kind of setup." It probably was, but the question is more who was setting it up. Or what. Asking about what is becoming a new thing.

She stretches out her feet a bit, waggling them on her heels as she considers the insides of her mug. "Byron's got a big mouth." There isn't any actual ire behind those words, and instead she sucks in a sharp breath. "But yeah... I'm not sure what's going on, Iz. Is he alive somewhere? Is it his ghost? Is it something pretending to be his ghost? I have too many questions, and literally no answers. I think Levi's gonna go ask the cops about it, but I also think he's dragging his heels so I'll go do it." Classic siblings. "Maybe I can con Byron into go asking. Then he can appropriately censor the information." She hesitates. "Unless you wanted to do that." Her smile is thin. "I'm kidding." Mostly. "But I'll let you know what help I need when you're back in town."

Then she settles into quiet, listening to Isabella with that well-honed quality -- a woman who is used to listening to people, hearing them out, while also carefully cataloging all the information. Her mouth starts to thin. "Dad said it was all about that we were close to something, something that makes our abilities, well, what they are. Maybe when we get far enough away, we stop feeling it." It's just a theory, and her theory is overlooked as she starts to frown. "You think that... we need to go back there?" She hesitates. "The shrine is for Movers?"

"I don't have a lot of connections with the PD, unfortunately," Isabella replies to Magnolia. "I'm good friends with Captain de la Vega and a few, but none of them are the sort to just let me go poking around cold cases. You'd have better luck on my end - I hear cop families are just like extended relatives to most police departments." There's a glance to her boarding pass and plane ticket on the fridge. "But yeah, if you need any additional help once I get back, I'll be more than happy to assist. I hope you find some answers, though. Your Dad seems like an interesting guy, and more in-the-know than most."

She takes another quiet sip of her coffee, eyes lighting upon the blonde's face. "Exposure?" she murmurs, her stare hooding faintly - something she hadn't considered just yet. "Would make sense, but what is the question, I guess." She chews faintly on her bottom lip, an idea germinating in the back of her head, but one that she sets aside in favor of listening to the rest of Magnolia's queries. "I think we shouldn't go back there until we know what we're looking at," she tells the private investigator, grim determination coloring her words. "Otherwise we might never get back and that's obviously unacceptable. For now, though, we ought to avoid opening Doors anywhere in the cemetery until a few things could be tested." Regarding the shrine, she shakes her head. "No...I think it was a memorial for those who disappeared." There's a quiet glance out the window. "And not just in Gray Harbor, the walls were too big..." She tries to remember it, but to contemplate that much endlessness starts to hurt and she rubs her fingers against her temple. "...and the names too many. It was specifically for the Lost, though what 'Lost' means in this instance is rather nebulous. It could mean beyond a physical disappearance, but I don't know in what sense. It's strange, I..."

She furrows her brows. "When I started fading, I felt as if...I was getting pulled in between two different lives."

"Ruiz is a good guy," is all Magnolia says at first, and there's a bit of distance in her blue eyes. She's looking into somewhere else, somewhere deeper, and when she takes a breath, she includes a kind of tight smile. "Sometimes, I wish this place wasn't so fucked up. In normal towns, with normal lives, people stay dead and weird shit just doesn't happen. But here? Well, why the fuck not? Literally, nothing surprises me anymore. Nothing. You could tell me that Santa Claus is real and I would go: Sure, but only in Gray Harbor."

Now she lets the conversation fall away, thinking back over the shrine and Isabella's insights. She nods soberly. "Alright, so how do we figure out what we're dealing with? Shrines are usually erected for a purpose, and I bet even ones in Gray Harbor have an intention behind them. So. If this is a shrine for lost Movers, my question is who is keeping track and why." Though, the wisdom behind keeping Doors closed in the cemetery is met with a low chuckle. "Man, I'm not sure I want to open Doors. Period." Not that she sometimes has a choice. Now she frowns. She thinks back over her dad on the tape cassette, the murmuring words in the background.

"Maybe you were... I mean, the Other Side probably changes you in such a way that you could live an entirely different life there."

"Actually, Santa Claus in this year's parade was very benevolent and handed out some special items to everyone, including the adults," Isabella remarks tiredly. "Produced by a company that seems to specialize in imbuing pieces of every aspect's skill in them. Like healing in chicken soup, and illusions whenever you put on glasses. They also seem very interested in keeping this town's secrets, secret. Maybe something Kevin might be interested in looking into - the company's called FCN. No idea what it stands for."

She scrubs her face with one hand. "As for how we attempt to figure out what we're dealing with, I'm not sure. Not much I could do about it at the moment, since I'll be leaving tomorrow for another continent. But I have a few ideas, I just need to see what I can act on when I get back. At the moment, though, I have to keep my brain on my dissertation defense and...away from the things that could wreck it." There's an apologetic smile at Magnolia. "Anyway, we're relatively certain the Door was opened into a Dream, and in a Dream anything could happen - designed to fuck with you, essentially. I don't think it's a shrine just for movers - I think it's a shrine for people who are Lost, in general. Anyway, until further notice, try not to open a Door anywhere in or around the cemetery? Otherwise you might not be able to come back."

Ultimately, that's the takeaway.

There's a pause at Magnolia's last words. "It was an ordinary life. Nothing remarkable about it, nothing in any way....me. Or the me I am now." She glances at the hallway leading to her bedroom, wrinkling her nose faintly. "I should probably get back to packing though, but thanks for the pie, and checking in on me. Say hi to Kevin for me?"

"Welcome to Gray Harbor," is all Magnolia can intone when Isabella mentions the special gifts from Santa. She missed that, but then again, it was the Holidays. Magnolia pretty much hid away with Kevin during that stretch. Now she finishes off the contents in her mug and sets it aside with a little clunk.

Now she turns slightly toward Isabella, rubbing slightly at the space just in front of her ear. "When you get back, call me, okay? I've been keeping my head down too long, and... maybe I can actually help with what's happening." That's a rare moment when Magnolia is willing to offer her Glimmer to aid something. She narrows her eyes slightly in thought. Then she starts to nod. "Yeah. No Doors in the cemetery. Got it."

With a quick inhale, the blonde starts to nod. "An ordinary life." Those words feel weird on her tongue, and then she starts to stand. "Travel safe, Iz. We will be here when you get back." She steps forward to offer a hug to the woman that includes a comforting squeeze. "Let me know when you're back, okay?"